Page:The Naval Officer (1829), vol. 3.djvu/48

 and I have known men of bad resolutions, and he was one of them whom you sent last night to his long account; and it was fortunate for you that you did; for as sure as you now stand here, that man would have compassed your death, either by dagger, by water, or by poison. I never knew or heard of the man who had struck or injured Peleg Oswald with impunity. He was a Kentucky man, of the Ohio, where he had 'squatted,' as we say; but he shot two men with his rifle, because they had declined exchanging some land with him. He had gouged the eye out of a third, for some trifling difference of opinion. These acts obliged him to quit the country; for, not only were the officers of justice in pursuit of him, but the man who had lost one eye kept a sharp look out with the other, and Peleg would certainly have had a rifle ball in his ear if he had not fled eastward, and taken again to the sea, to which he was originally brought up. I did not know all his history till long after he and I became ship-